Thoughts and Ideas

For the third year, this article summarizes the results of the ranking of the most influential experts on Twitter debating corporate governance issues and trends. There are quite a few new faces this year in the TOP 25, an illustration of the dynamism of this community.

Last year, I wrote a blog that summarized the most influencial experts on Twitter discussing corporate governance. One year later, let's look at what has changed and analyze how the corporate governance community is shaping up on Twitter.

With the revelation of each new failure caused by "strategic short-sightedness," as illustrated by the recent Kodak, HP, RIM and Blockbuster failures, companies must rethink their governance systems and in particular the role of the board of directors.

As women flooded the "Women on Boards Bootcamp" sessions at the Women's Forum which took place in Deauville this week, I could not help but reflect that the pool of women candidates willing to sit on boards was indeed rich, diverse, and experienced."Because I dare" could best summarize the discussions - and the general mood: women need to take a much more aggressive approach if they want to set foot in the boardroom. They need to gain self confidence to seek out those board positions, leverage their relevant experiences in governance, and stop to be simply waiting for the opportunities to be presented to them.

In 2009, the Deloitte Ethics and Workplace Survey explored attitudes about social networking and pointed out the significance of social media for board of directors. 58 percent of executives felt that the reputational risk associated with social networking should be a board room issue. Yet, only 17 percent of executives said that they currently had programs in place to monitor and mitigate reputational risks that may arise with social network usage. Boards have since largely left it to management to figure out its social media strategy. When informally asked in a boardroom, Competia found that less than 5% of directors admit having ever used and participated in social media. Mistrust is widespread and the issue of privacy is of utmost concern. The implications of social media for the board far outreach reputation risk. As the use of social media is rapidly spreading and challenging every single company business model and strategy, it is time for directors to understand the implications for corporate governance.

Having read the excellent analysis by my colleague AquteIntel about "the Most Influential Competitive Intelligence tweeter in 2010" ( read here ), I was curious, and inspired to analyze how the corporate governance world is shaping up on Twitter.